archie and reggie decided they were gonna do a few football drills together after school and jughead had tagged along because he had nothing better to do. the three of them walked to the football field, with archie carrying a bag of footballs and practice cones over his shoulder.
"alright so, jughead you can throw a football right?" archie asked jughead as he set the bag down
jughead scoffed
"i'm offended that you even asked me that question."
"can you blame him? you don't really look like the 'football throwing type'." reggie said
jughead just rolled his eyes and grabbed a football out of the bag.
"i'll just show you then." jughead shrugged
archie and reggie gave each other a look before archie "went long" and asked jughead to throw him the ball. jughead threw the ball in a satisfyingly perfect spiral into archie's hands.
"i'm impressed." reggie said patting jughead on the back
"now let's see if you can catch!" archie yelled from across the field.
jughead got nervous because he knew his hand eye coordination was very off. he could throw but definitely couldn't catch. but he didn't wanna embarrass himself in front of two of the best football players on the team, so he decided he'd try.
"pshhh, i can catch!" jughead yelled back.
"we'll see about that!" archie yelled.
archie tried mentally calculating the amount of strength and speed he needed to get the ball all the way across the field to jughead. unfortunately he over-calculated his throw and the ball flew so fast out of his hands that none of them had a moment to think before the ball hit jughead dead in the head (i shouldn't be laughing while writing this but i'm dying 💀) jughead's vision went black for a second, but regained itself so he thought he was fine but as soon as he tried to take a step his vision went black again and he fell face first into the grass.
"shit" archie mumbled to himself before running across the field to get to jughead.
since reggie was closer, he quickly went over to jughead and rolled him onto his back so his face wasn't in the dirt. when he noticed that jughead's eyes weren't open he panicked and started shaking jughead frantically.
"hey, jughead. jughead, wake up." reggie said while lightly slapping his face, trying to get a reaction out of the unconscious boy.
"is he ok?" archie asked, out of breath after running over to his to friends.
"does he look ok?" reggie snapped still hitting jughead's face
"reggie stop, that's not gonna wake him up. call 911 or something." archie panicked
"ok, ok. he's not dead, right?" reggie asked as he frantically tried to get his phone out of his back pocket
"no, no. he can't be dead. not from getting hit in the head with a football. right?" archie breathed out, practically hyperventilating
reggie didn't answer because he was on the phone with an operator. "yea, um my friend, he uh, he hit his head really hard and now his eyes won't open and i'm freakin out...no, how do you check for a pulse?...ok, ok i'm doing it...yes he has a pulse...riverdale high school...yes, uh huh. we're on the football field...ok thank you." reggie said before hanging up the phone with a deep sigh.
"the ambulance is on its way, it should be here in about five minutes." reggie said to archie
all archie could do was nod in response. he was so overwhelmed with the guilt of feeling like this was all his fault, that he couldn't speak.
the ambulance finally arrived after what seemed like the longest 5 minuets of the boys' lives. the emt's (emergency medical technicians) rushed over to the boys with a stretcher and quickly put jughead onto it and rushed him into the ambulance.
